It's not due to lack of suitable treatment that patients with kidney failure die in India. It's usually lack of money. Kidneys are vital for the body - they clear the waste products that would otherwise become toxic.

advertisement

Supriya Bezbaruah

November 5, 2001

ISSUE DATE: November 5, 2001

UPDATED: October 1, 2012 12:18 IST

It's not due to lack of suitable treatment that patients with kidney failure die in India. It's usually lack of money. Kidneys are vital for the body - they clear the waste products that would otherwise become toxic.

Every year, more than one lakh new patients reach the final stages of renal (kidney-related) diseases. Yet only 4,000 get kidney transplants. Another 5,000 settle for dialysis, where the kidney's role is fulfilled through artificial means.

The common procedure, haemodialysis, is very uncomfortable. In five-hour hospital sessions three times a week, the patient's blood is drained, cleansed by a machine outside the body, and returned to the body. This costs Rs 12,000-Rs 22,000 a month.

A more comfortable option is peritoneal dialysis in which an abdominal membrane acts as a filtering device. Using local anaesthesia, a small plastic tube is inserted into the abdominal cavity and linked to two plastic bags outside the body. The first bag contains the dialysis fluid which empties into the cavity.

Waste products from the body empty into this fluid, which then drains into the second bag. All this requires is regular replacement of the bags, a task that can easily be done at home.

And now that the fluids are being manufactured in India, the price has dropped from more than Rs 40,000 to Rs 15,000 a month.

This procedure is safer for children and diabetics or heart disease patients, says A.K. Bhalla, senior consultant nephrologist at Delhi's Ganga Ram Hospital. It's also more affordable. But it is still a long way from being a treatment for the masses.

Get real-time alerts and all the news on your phone with the all-new India Today app. Download from